You recall incorrectly. I attempted to explain how pluralists and monists actually justify their arguments because the versions of the debate being presented made the debate completely trivial, and made the majority position appear ridiculous—refuted by the mere existence of non-classical logics.

Hubris, No?

How is it any more hubristic than:

A. Claiming that nothing is good or bad? Or;
B. Claiming that such knowledge is impossible?

Both of these involve claims that the overwhelming majority of people, both today and throughout history, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers have rejected. Oh well, sometimes the majority is simply wrong, and we have good reasons to reject their opinions. I don't think this necessarily requires "hubris."

However, I'll trade a caricature for a caricature. Certainly common formulations of A (including those regularly repeated on this site) often do have a strong flavor of hubris. Why has everyone been so wrong—wrong about a fundemental aspect of human life and the world? Common explanations often involve "almost everyone" being involved in massive, infantile coping projects. Religion, or sometimes "any notion of morality" as opiates for the weak minded, unready to take responsibility in a world beyond good and evil. Or else morality is simply a form of social control which the sheeple are unable to see through.

Is Nietzsche not hubristic? Or Marx, or Foucault?

Proponents of B are in the position of claiming that both proponents of moral realism and the folks in A cannot know what they think they know. But I think this sort of skepticism is every bit as radical as other forms of radical skepticism. For, to claim that we cannot know if being born addicted to heroin, or having your water filled with lead, is bad for one, or that "helping kids learn to read is better than molesting them," is a statement forever bereft of epistemic warrant, seems to go about as far a denying "I have hands," or "other people exist." Doesn't the embrace of these positions require a sort of hubris? Parmenides needs to tell virtually everyone else that they are delusional for thinking motion exists. The deflationist needs to claim that the truth claims of the sciences and most other philosophy are bunk and that people don't really know what is meant by terms like "true" and "real," which, pace their understanding, are tokens in games.

Of course, one can embrace A, B, or moral realism with relative gradations of enthusiasm or certainty. Perhaps those who are less certain or less committed are less hubristic? But I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of "bourgeoisie metaphysics" where anything is only allowed to be true if it allows everything else to be. My thoughts are that you should be about as certain or committed as you have good reason to be.

What would it be like, to have an ethical calculus that will tell us What To Do in every case?

In particular, how would we tell that we had the calculus right? To know we had it right would require that we had a way to evaluate it's results that was independent of the calculus.

But if we had such an independent way to evaluate the calculus, why not use that instead of the calculus?

A "moral calculus" strikes me as an analytic fever dream to be honest. Could we also have an epistemic calculus that always leads to true judgements? Wouldn't this epistemic calculus cover our moral cases too?

But if it doesn't seem possible to have such an "epistemic calculus," it hardly seems to me that we should conclude that nothing is true or false, or that nothing is knowable as such.

When we speak of what health is for organisms generally and what health is "for you," why it is "healthy (for you) to be healthy," we are not speaking of two totally equivocal concepts, nor do I see how this analagous relationship would render "health" conceptually vacuous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It doesn't render "health" vacuous, it renders the statement vacuous.

This is a good example, and helps me clarify why the use of "good" is different. Try to imagine a circumstance under which someone would actually say "It's healthy for you to be healthy." What sort of response would be appropriate? I could say, "Well, duh!" Or scratch my head and say, "So you're saying that it's a healthy thing for me to be healthy?" or . . . I'm not sure what else. The point is that we don't say such a thing -- it doesn't mean anything in our normal discourse. It just expresses some kind of redundancy. (Perhaps a person might be trying to say, "You'll feel good if you're healthy," but that's an entirely different assertion.)

Now compare to "It's good for you to be good." This is often said, especially in ethical contexts. Why does it have such a common use? I contend that it's because here, the first "good" has a different meaning from the second "good." We would paraphrase the statement, and commonly understand it, as saying, "It will turn out to be a good thing for you if you do good things." The difference in meaning that's being employed is: "good" as a personal experience of some sort, versus "good" as a quality of actions you perform. (Importantly, this personal experience needn't be selfish in the pejorative sense. It just needs to be about you. "Experiencing your telos through flourishing" is a good of the first, personal kind.) Understood this way, not only is the statement not vacuous in the way that "It's healthy for you to be healthy" is vacuous, but it raises profound and difficult questions about the relation of personal goods like pleasure, flourishing, esteem, etc. with ethical conduct toward others. Would it be handier if English had a more precise vocabulary for expressing this distinction? Sure, but we don't.

So, on this analysis, you're absolutely right to defend the tradition of the Good as not being conceptually empty. But that's because it really does use "good" in two different ways, while searching for a metaphysical way to unite them. It's perhaps the most important question in ethics -- whether this union of the personal and the universalizable is possible, and how -- and I believe it was Kant who showed this most carefully, though I don't accept his solution in its entirety. But let me stop here and see whether this makes sense to you.

- :up:

A few days ago Peter Singer did an informal interview where he defends moral realism, which is helpful given his atheism:

We would paraphrase the statement, and commonly understand it, as saying, "It will turn out to be a good thing for you if you do good things." — J

And you could paraphrase the health statement as, "Your health will improve* if you engage in healthy activities." I don't see any difference.

The point is that we don't say such a thing — J

Rather, the point is that we do. Trying to convince someone to engage in healthy behavior is just an extrapolation of that basic claim, and we do that sort of thing constantly.

If there were no akrasia and we were purely intellectual creatures then perhaps such statements would be useless, but as it happens we are not. As it happens we engage in unhealthy behaviors even though we desire health.

* Or else, "Your health will be robust/optimal if..."

The OP is just asking if we do good because otherwise we'll be struck by lightning, or go to hell, or reap the crop of evil? Are we good for social acceptance and praise, or due to fear? If the highest earthly attainment is to live authentically, how does morality fit into that?

Or if we're just meaninglessly falling through a void, does it matter? It would help if we gave an example.

For instance, it's a moral good to treat people with respect. Do you do it? If so, why? Or why not?

It's possible my explanation is bad. I don't think these are two different uses at all, and I don't think Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Boethius, etc. intend them as such.

When people say, "it will be good for you to study philosophy," "it will be good for you to start exercising," or "it's good for you to learn to appreciate Homer, Hesiod, and Horace," they certainly don't mean "you will enjoy those things." People often tell people that "x will be good for them," precisely as motivation for them to do things they do not want to do, even when the primary proximate beneficiary of these acts is the person doing them (although it isn't only for the good of the person undertaking these challenges; the champions of the liberal arts tend to argue that all of society benefits from the student's efforts).

Perhaps pornography is a good example here. When people say, "you shouldn't consume pornography, it will mess with your ability to have healthy relationships," they are generally speaking about both one's ability to to enjoy a healthy relationship, but often even moreso one's ability to be a good partner for someone else. Yet what is good for the whole is good for the person who is part of the whole, and someone's inability to be a good "part" is "bad for them" for the same reasons that it is bad "for everyone else." For Aristotle, this analysis tends to stop at the limits of the polis (although not exclusively), whereas for someone like St. Augustine it extends to the entire world, but it's the same idea.

Second, consider Book X of the Ethics where Aristotle identifies the life of contemplation as the highest good, the most divine. Plenty of thinkers agree with Aristotle here (even seemingly some in Eastern traditions). Suppose he is right. Well, in this case, what is most "good for you," is to have your wonder (the first principle of philosophy and science) satisfied. Yet, on the classical view, this is simply impossible for the person who lacks virtue. Indeed, for Plato it seems that it is impossible to truly know the Good and to act wickedly (e.g. the Parmenides). Likewise, the beatific vision, St. Augustine's ascent with St. Monica in Book IX of the Confessions, or St. Bonaventure's ascent in The Mind's Journey to God cannot be accomplished by the wicked. One cannot fully achieve these while giving in to lusts (or perhaps even still being tempted by them), coveting, etc.

It's a contradiction in terms to say that one could "do wrong" while having the best for oneself. Consider St. Augustine's argument that the soul in Heaven, having been perfected, has become so free that it is incapable of sin (for the same reason that the person most free to run never trips and falls over). This isn't just a Christian idea though, Porphyry's Pythagoras and Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana are both saints, and we might add Plato's Socrates here.* They have what is "best for them," and in having this they are going to be doing "the right thing." Likewise, St. Athanasius' St. Anthony has what is truly "best for him," Christ, and it is by/through his possession of this that he also does what is "right." They're the same thing at the limit.


So, perhaps I am explaining it poorly, or perhaps it is just hard to not read the equivocal division of modern ethics back into the earlier ethics (MacIntyre's point).

The reason I find MacIntyre's thesis plausible is because I certainly had this difficulty with ancient thought early on. But, perhaps my own problem was approaching it too hubristically, because, honestly, my original thoughts were that Hume's guillotine, the old "is-ought" chasm simply hadn't occured to prior thinkers precisely because religion and tradition were blinding them to it. I don't think that now though, I think Hume's guillotine simply makes no sense with how Plato and Aristotle see the Good or virtue.

I think history had to pull apart the concepts of "doing right," and this being "what is best to do 'for you.'" And ultimately, I think this goes back into the birth of nominalism, the univocity of being, and the way in which "human virtue," as classically conceived, is often (perhaps not always) problematic for a theology of "faith alone" or "total depravity." You need some changes before Luther can tell Erasmus:

"If it is difficult to believe in God’s mercy and goodness when He damns those who do not deserve it, we must recall that if God’s justice could be recognized as just by human comprehension, it would not be divine."

Here is a great example of the equivocity that separates the unknowable right, "God's Good," from what is or seems "good for us," human good. And of course I mention Calvin and Luther because they are the big names, but this is certainly a shift in Catholic theology too (it starts there in late-medieval nominalism)—some "Baroque Thomism" might be called "more Calvinist than Calvin."

* I really don't think we're supposed to pity Socrates as "receiving something that is 'bad for him.'" He explicitly tells us not to think this way. It's more like Sydney Carton's execution at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities:" "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known." I don't think Carton would think it is better "for him" to have not gone through with his plan to die in Darnay's stead.

I guess the other thing is that "doing the right thing" in contemporary ethics tends to be sensuously sterile, and this can make it seem bizarre how it could truly be "best for us."

But Plato talks about the desire to "couple" with the Good, which is apparently every bit as erotic as in the original Greek. We get this vision in the Symposium:

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

Or St. Augustine in the Confessions:

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.